Nights with Julia always started the same. The lights dimmed, the covers pulled up, the ritual of bodies that knew each other too well. Married fifteen years, they moved like habit—like brushing teeth or turning off the TV.
But then came the small detail that undid him.
She closed her eyes. Too soon. Not the lazy flutter of sleepiness, not the soft drift of trust. No—Julia shut her eyes tight, as if bracing herself.
And her breath… shifted.
It wasn’t the sigh she used to give when he kissed the back of her neck. It wasn’t the small giggle she used to let slip when he pressed too hard on her hip. It was something heavier, a trembling inhale, like she was somewhere else. With someone else.
Tom froze. His hand lingered on her thigh, but his mind spun.
Slow motion.
Her nails gripped the sheet, pulling it closer, knuckles white. Her lips parted, whispering something—too faint to catch, but not his name.
He stared, chest tightening. He wanted to shake her, demand to know who the hell she was imagining. But he couldn’t move. He just watched, his body still inside her, realizing he wasn’t the center of this moment at all.
Julia’s story didn’t begin that night.
Two months earlier, she had joined a yoga class across town. “For my back,” she’d said, laughing about getting older, needing to stay flexible. Tom hadn’t argued. He liked seeing her glow when she came home sweaty, hair messy, cheeks red.
But then came the changes. She lingered in front of the mirror longer. She shaved more carefully. She bought a new bra—lace, not practical cotton.
And when she lay in bed at night, her mind was no longer with her husband.
It was with Ethan, the younger instructor who corrected her poses with hands that stayed just a second too long. Hands that pressed at the small of her back, guiding her hips forward. Eyes that held hers when he told her to “breathe deeper.”
She carried Ethan into their bed.
Tom felt it in the way she arched suddenly, like her body responded to a rhythm he wasn’t giving. He saw it in her mouth—wet, open, whispering the wrong sounds.
Once, her eyes slipped open mid-moan, catching his. Guilt flickered there, but not enough to stop. She shut them quickly, shutting him out again.
And Tom… he hated it.
But God, he wanted it too.
There was something unbearably erotic about knowing his wife was getting off on another man inside her head while her body still belonged to him. It disgusted him. It drove him mad. And it turned him on in a way he’d never admit.
That night, instead of pulling away, he leaned into it. He grabbed her wrists, pinning them above her head. Her gasp was sharp, startled. He pressed harder, forcing her eyes open.
“Look at me,” he growled.
She trembled, lips parted, but didn’t resist. Her pupils widened, glassy, caught between fear and desire.
For the first time, she couldn’t hide behind her eyelids. He saw her. Saw the flush creeping up her chest, saw the shame twisting with hunger.
And she came like that—eyes wide, staring straight at him but lost in her own storm.
After, she curled into the sheets, breathing unevenly. He lay beside her, staring at the ceiling, listening to the silence that followed.
She didn’t confess. He didn’t ask.
But the truth was there, heavy in the air between them: when Julia closed her eyes, it wasn’t her husband she gave herself to.
It was the fantasy of someone else.
And Tom, broken and aroused all at once, had to decide—was he going to fight that ghost? Or was he going to let it keep slipping under the covers with them, night after night, until it destroyed them both?
The sheets carried the answer. Wrinkled. Damp. And tainted with desire neither of them dared name.
